By James Cox.
USA Today. May 10, 2001.
MIAMI -- The aristocrats of a long-ago Cuba sipped dark rum in a hotel here
recently, trading gossip and repeating old vows to take back ranches and sugar
mills they haven't seen in four decades.
''We can't wait for the Cuban government to fall to start looking at the
market,'' Pablo Carreno, elderly scion of an exiled sugar family, told an annual
gathering of the country's former cattlemen and sugar barons.
Few of the 1.3 million Cuban-Americans banked as much as these men on the
popular exile slogan: En los noventa, Fidel revienta! -- ''In the nineties,
Fidel will explode!'' But with the '90s gone, time is running out on the colonos
who lost plantations and on other older Cubans who fled the 1959 socialist
revolution.
Increasingly, it's a younger generation with little or no memory of Cuba
keeping a deathwatch over the Castro regime. Thanks to the hard work of
immigrant parents, Cuban-American baby boomers have the education, know-how and
money to help modernize a decaying Cuba. But as eyewitnesses to their parents'
anguish, many tread lightly on the subject.
''I hope we're more careful and mature,'' says Carlos Saladrigas, 52, a
prominent Miami businessman. ''I'm even careful about the term 'reconstruction,'
because it implies we want a return to what was there before. In a historical
and practical sense, that's not possible.''
Younger members of the exile community burn to return to Cuba, even if
they've seen it only through their parents' eyes. It is ''a sacred, moral
responsibility,'' Saladrigas says.
Professionals and entrepreneurs have the financial clout to carry out such
duty. A fifth of Cuban-American households earn more than $75,000 a year, the
largest percentage among Hispanic-Americans. Cuban-Americans own 138 of the
USA's 500 biggest Hispanic-owned companies, although they are just 3.4% of the
Hispanic population, says Hispanic Business magazine.
With Castro dead or deposed, ''there won't be enough flights, enough hotels,
enough anything in Cuba to accommodate us all,'' Sergio Pino says.
Pino, 44, a South Florida home builder, has formed an investor group and
hopes to raise $50 million for his return to the country he left at age 12. By
building apartments and townhouses for Cubans, he says, he can ease the severe
housing shortage that has resulted in four and five families inhabiting what
were single-family houses before the revolution.
Other midcareer Cuban-Americans say they share a commitment to help a free
Cuba, but most sound more patient and less passionate than Pino.
''It's difficult to make short-term plans,'' says Armando Guerra, an
executive at the family-owned Sedano's supermarket and drugstore chain in
Florida. ''Other than getting your finances in place, there's not much you can
do.''
Peter Suarez sees a role for his family's Miami-based farm-equipment
company. ''Sure, we'll be there,'' Suarez, 36, says. ''I've been raised around
it, raised in a town where it's always in your face, but I can't say I have the
same passion about it my father has.''
Cautious for a reason
One reason for the wariness is Castro's ability to survive crisis after
crisis. Another is last year's Elian Gonzalez episode. The battle over the
6-year-old left many Cuban-Americans feeling they had been portrayed as arrogant
extremists. ''We didn't realize where we stood in respect to the rest of the
country,'' says Oscar Abello, a Miami shipping consultant.
Indeed, for the first time, Cuban-Americans recognized they were outside
mainstream U.S. public opinion. The painful experience forced exile groups to
reassess their image and soften the tone -- if not the substance -- of their
campaign to isolate Castro.
For Abello, 61, that means exercising caution when talking about Cuba's
future. He acknowledges studying the feasibility of running passenger ferries
between Florida ports and Havana one day. But he quickly adds: ''I have no
plans. It's too presumptuous.''
Presumptuousness has burned Cuban-Americans before, namely after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Gleeful exile groups cranked out studies that
showed Castro would topple without Soviet subsidies. ''Change in Cuba is
imminent,'' predicted a 1993 report by the Cuban American National Foundation,
which prepared a confidential guide to the island's economy.
Such talk was a boon to Castro, who called the exiles ''worms'' and
opportunists. ''Fidel said, 'Look at these guys. They want to take your
houses,''' says Joe Garcia, executive director of the CANF. ''We don't want
their houses. The poorest guy in Miami lives better than much of the power elite
in Havana.''
Garcia says exiles whose property was seized by the regime should get
compensation when Cuba finally turns its back on communism. ''But these guys who
want to talk about getting property back, it's absurd.''
At 74, Castro has not exploded. His economy is a creaking museum piece that
nearly fell apart with the loss of $4 billion to $6 billion in annual Soviet
subsidies. Illinois, which has roughly the same population, generates 23 times
the island's economic output today.
The loss of Soviet aid forced Castro to dollarize much of his economy and
open the door to limited foreign investment. Still, Cuba is losing ground to
Third World countries it once aided, because they have done what he refuses to
do: use cheap labor to draw outside investment, manufacturing jobs and
technology.
Cuban unemployment hovers near 20%, and many on the island don't get enough
to eat. The sugar industry is in a slump. Tourism, a prime source of hard
currency, has flattened out because Cuba gets little repeat business from
Europeans and Canadians turned off by high prices and lack of amenities.
Castro hangs tough
But Castro has been astonishingly resilient. Energy shortages left the
country facing partial blackouts on 344 days in 1994. New and refurbished power
plants built with outside investment cut the number to 20 days last year, says
Jason Feer, publisher of CubaNews, a monthly newsletter.
Cuban-Americans have underestimated Castro and bet everything on the idea
that he is the sole obstacle to a democratic transition, Feer says. ''They
assume a successor government is going to be pro-market, pro-investment,
pro-exile and pro-U.S.,'' he says. ''The most likely scenario is you'll see
communists remain in power for a certain period after Castro. That regime may be
more favorable to warming up to the U.S., but it's still going to be a
problematic relationship.''
Cuban-American baby boomers say they accept the notion that Cuba's
transition might not happen overnight. Many insist they have no interest in
compensation or claims for old family property. And some are prepared to find
that their investment and help might not initially be welcome once Castro is
gone.
Those feelings aside, CANF says it's time to start planning again for a
post-Castro Cuba. The organization is getting ready to commission the first
update of its 1992 study of the island's economic needs.
One reason for the update is that Cuban-American business people often know
less about conditions in Cuba than other interested Americans. Last year alone,
3,400 representatives from 2,500 U.S. firms traveled to Cuba, estimates John
Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. As a result,
companies such as Archer Daniels Midland have troves of information about the
country and contacts in the Cuban leadership.
Exiles can travel to Cuba to visit family members, but few will admit to
making business reconnaissance trips. ''I don't think I know a lot about Cuba
these days,'' Abello says. ''And I don't think other people in Miami know much,
either.''
Unlike younger Cuban-Americans, the old sugar mill owners and ranchers talk
as if they can still smell cane fields and see their pastures. It's important
not to offend them -- and not to be bound by the sepia-toned Cuba they are
nostalgic for, Saladrigas says. ''If we think the future of Cuba is sugar,
Cuba's in real trouble. I'd rather have it be knowledge-based, services and
technology,'' he says. ''What's missing for us is a sense of reality about
(what) it is to be in Cuba today. The exiles from the '60s have never been back.
They have a view of things that's not subject to a reality check.'' | 